Personal Reference 身元保証人 mimoto hoshounin

In Japan, asking someone to be your 保証人　hoshounin or guarantor, can be fatal to your friendship. I believe many Japanese people:

1) have been brought up to refuse requests to become a guarantor - sometimes referred to as co-signer

2) have a general fear of hoshounin because they heard about friends co-signing for a loan, and the actual debtor disappearing, thus leaving the hoshounin to foot the entire bill

Even if you work for a large corporation like Microsoft, Dell, or Google, and makes heaps of money, many real estate companies require you to have either a guarantor or enroll in a guarantor service. In a guarantor service, you end up paying half one month's rent, plus 10,000 yen annually to insure yourself. If for some reason you are unable to pay for the rent on time, the guarantor service will step and cover the rent. If the delinquent amount of rent is too high, you will be evicted, and the locks changed though. I'll come back to the rest of the ridiculous fees you need to pay when renting a place in another post.

To avoid the hefty fees when moving in, the unknowing foreigner will approach his Japanese buddy and ask him to be a hoshounin. The foreigner, not understanding the weight behind the question, will casually ask, "Duhhh...Toshi-san, can you be my hoshounin?" Like he was asking for a light. Unless you both make a lot of money, your Japanese buddy will may:

a) feel very uncomfortable and you will never hear from him again

b) gladly take the hoshounin application home to fill out and get a tongue lashing from his wife for putting the household finances at risk for the sake of some gaijin he barely knows

c) happily oblige, but may not make enough to insure your rent

d) happily oblige, and make enough money to insure your rent

Now the information above is for loans and apartment rentals, but I experienced something different. When applying for the Japanese company I am working for, I required 身元保証人 mimoto hoshounin. There's that word. Guarantor. The words in Japanese sounds more like, "I personally guarantee this person as a human being." In English, it's closer to a personal reference. I needed to find two people before actually being cleared for employment. I asked one buddy who is filthy rich but the panty-ass turned me down. I'm being a baby and deciding whether I should speak to him again. Two other of my buddies gladly accepted.

Many of my Japanese friends told me that it was ridiculous that I had to have the names, addresses, and hanko (official seals) of my personal references. The personal references must be renewed after three years, and the company can demand new references at any time. This was kinda discouraging. I'll talk more about the apartment rental application process later. It's Friday tomorrow. Maybe I'll go out and get drunk like everyone else working in Tokyo!

I'll try to post up some photos more often. I don't usually have a digital camera with me, so most of my photos will be via my cell phone camera...